1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to audio playback and, more particularly, to audio playback for use in proofreading draft transcripts of speech.
2. Related Art
It is desirable in many contexts to transcribe human speech. In the legal profession, for example, transcriptionists transcribe testimony given in court proceedings and in depositions to produce a written transcript of the testimony. Similarly, in the medical profession, transcripts are produced of diagnoses, prognoses, prescriptions, and other information dictated by doctors and other medical professionals. Transcripts in these and other fields typically need to be highly accurate (as measured in terms of the degree of correspondence between the semantic content (meaning) of the original speech and the semantic content of the resulting transcript) because of the reliance placed on the resulting transcripts and the harm that could result from an inaccuracy (such as providing an incorrect prescription drug to a patient). It may be difficult to produce an initial transcript that is highly accurate for a variety of reasons, such as variations in: (1) features of the speakers whose speech is transcribed (e.g., accent, volume, dialect, speed); (2) external conditions (e.g., background noise); (3) the transcriptionist or transcription system (e.g., imperfect hearing or audio capture capabilities, imperfect understanding of language); or (4) the recording/transmission medium (e.g., paper, analog audio tape, analog telephone network, compression algorithms applied in digital telephone networks, and noises/artifacts due to cell phone channels).
The first draft of a transcript, whether produced by a human transcriptionist or an automated speech recognition system, may therefore include a variety of errors. Typically it is necessary to proofread and edit such draft documents to correct the errors contained therein. Transcription errors that need correction may include, for example, any of the following: missing words or word sequences; excessive wording; mis-spelled, -typed, or -recognized words; missing or excessive punctuation; misinterpretation of semantic concepts (e.g., mistakenly interpreting an allergy to a particular medication as the medication itself); and incorrect document structure (such as incorrect, missing, or redundant sections, enumerations, paragraphs, or lists).
Although it might be possible for the speaker whose speech is transcribed to proofread the draft transcript merely by reading the transcript (because the content of the speech may be fresh in the speaker's mind), any other proofreader must typically listen to a recording of the speech while reading the draft transcript in order to proofread it. Proofreading performed in this way can be tedious, time-consuming, costly, and itself error-prone. What is needed, therefore, are improved techniques for correcting errors in draft transcripts.